Posts Tagged ‘not-for-profit’

Unilever, in partnership with PSI and Facebook, hopes to harness the social graph to address one of the world’s most critical challenges: access to clean water… When [Facebook] users sign up to Waterworks, they partner with an individual waterworker, making the connection personal. The waterworker in the field is equipped with a smartphone, able to send updates back to partners through photos and videos. The updates post to the partner’s Facebook page, so all of their connections also see the impact the donation is making- how many liters of water the donation has provided and the number of people whose lives have been changed by the clean water.

People spend a lot of time watching frivolous, ridiculous video online – so Ogilvy Cape Town developed an innovative ‘YouTube interventions’ campaign for Forever Wild based on this insight.

Forever Wild is aiming to gather support from the public and various stakeholders to help fight against rhino poaching in South Africa and save the rhino from extinction.

For the ‘YouTube interventions’ campaign over 60 frivolous trending videos (and some classics) were adapted to include messaging encouraging people to join the fight against rhino poaching and sign a petition.

Targeting people who actively searched for silly viral videos, these ‘Trojan Horses videos’ forced viewers to confront the reality of how they spent their time online and do something positive for a cause.

With PR horror stories in mind of where brands have attempted to subvert trending terms for their own gain… this was a somewhat risky strategy. The video mentions some people were indeed annoyed by the manipulation. But for such an important cause, Ogilvy could get away with it… this once at least.

I’m not sure YouTube would be amused if this tactic is widely repeated, but this campaign shows how understanding people, their viewing habits and specific platform capabilities can be utilised for innovative campaigns that drive awareness and social action.

The results: Ogilvy claim they gained over 300,000 YouTube views, over 11,000 Facebook likes, and petition signatures increased by almost 400%, enough to present a strong case to Congress later in 2012. And all this with $0 spent.

With the ultimate aim of reducing homeless dogs in the United States – this new ‘Best Friends’ mobile app enables users to upload pictures of themselves to be shown a doggy ‘match’ based on facial characteristics. (Similar to this earlier Doggelganger site)

The App also provides: adoptable dog search by zip code, simple giving to help homeless pets, and their grassroots pledge to start seeing invisible dogs. The dual purpose of the app is to raise awareness of the thousands of dogs waiting in shelters to be seen and adopted..

What the app does well then, is combine multiple information points, ways for people to take action around the core issue, and entirely personalised fun… as for the numbers:

[Beth Kanter] asked Best Friends Marketing Coordinator Claudia Perrone how they were measuring success. The ultimate KPI, of course, is dog adoptions. But they are looking at associated metrics such as: downloads, user comments, sharing, and Google analytics to show dog searches… then data collection (emails and mobile opt-ins), microdonations, and buzz via earned media.

Mood affects our benevolence and patience – how we create and consume media. So taking account of others’ moods is valuable when we communicate: on an individual, institutional and commercial level.

Claudio Ciborra once put it like this: “moods capture the situatedness of the actor as opposed to the situation of the action only.”

In addition to many factors that affect how we see and listen, what we say and how we say it (professional and friendship networks, personal interests, cultural positionality, prior experience and location) – mood always matters.

Yet it’s hard to tell mood online… where we usually cannot see other people’s faces. The slight raise of the eyebrow, roll of the eyes, gentle smirk. Irony, anger, sarcasm, humour can be completely missed as we send messages across cyberspace in the form of flat text. So the consideration of mood is important in social technology.. but is still a rarity.

WWF are using the Get Satisfaction platform to help capture ideas from web users – in the spirit of similar successful online crowdsourcing initiatives such as MyStarbucks Idea. WWF website visitors are presented with this pop-up as they browse the site:

A user can directly submit ideas through this – and also specify how the idea makes them feel. Each contribution then lives on the Get Satisfaction site – where others can vote and comment on it, and WWF can respond too. Interestingly you can also see, overall, collective users’ mood in relation to the idea.

In this case we have a fairly uncontroversial suggestion – about extending the annual Earth Hour event to happen more often. But we can imagine how this type of mood aggregation can, in the future, start to enable proactive, prosocial prioritization of responses by organisations and brands…

From understanding how upset people are about the imminent destruction of a particular rainforest, to how delighted they would be at the introduction of a new handbag shade, to how frustrated they are about socio-economic conditions – perhaps even if they are angry enough to riot…

In this incredibly successful campaign, WWF Hungary reached over 275,000 people by combining creativity, sustainability, and PR. Its goal was to put the WWF at the forefront of Hungarian’s minds, whilst highlighting that individuals can donate 1% of their taxes to a charity of their choice. This was achieved (in partnership with their agency Akcio360) as follows:

Just one WWF leaflet was printed, stating that 1% of tax is donateable to charity organisations in Hungary

Two panda-dressed volunteers went to a shopping centre, one standing each end of escalators taking people between floors

Panda one gave the leaflet to a person travelling up the escalator who, after reading, passed it to Panda two on reaching the top. The same leaflet was then given to the next person travelling down the escalator – and, repeat.

This day of distributing just one leaflet was recorded and circulated to journalists and bloggers, leading to the video becoming a global viral hit.

WWF therefore also managed to spread a secondary message (of relevance to marketers) in their video – on the potential for using media in an environmentally conscious and effective way:

Charities are in the business of benevolence, but that doesn’t mean they’re great at storytelling. There is a tendency to think that everyone’s perspective on, and interactions with, a cause are the same. This is patently untrue. In fact, the different angles of a cause hold real possibility if they’re brought to light

An interesting example of micro-activism on Twitter – this well-crafted tweet by Kevin Bergen struck me as follows:

Firstly, it’s an individual (not an organisation) with a modest following who is sharing a personal tragedy and using the platform to reach to other people on the basis that this issue (cancer) will affect most of us directly or indirectly in our lifetimes

By just asking for a re-tweet this means a very small amount of effort is required in exchange for his financial contribution

These re-tweets will mean everyone who sees them will think about the issue in terms of a human example. Because Kevin is an individual, not a charity or institution, this makes his request seem all the more human and authentic